


I Want To Make You Feel Beautiful

by talkingtothesky



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-18
Updated: 2007-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-19 05:17:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/pseuds/talkingtothesky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not always rainbows and butterflies, it's compromise, it moves us along. </p>
            </blockquote>





	I Want To Make You Feel Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 1973flashfic [Beauty challenge](http://1973flashfic.livejournal.com/tag/beauty%20challenge). Title and summary from Maroon 5's _She Will Be Loved_. Spoilers for 2x08.

He’s travelled an impossibly long way to be here. Thirty-three years, a promotion, a mother. All stragglers in his wake now. Gone, just like that. It sounds stupid but, he’d thought it a good idea at the time. And it was- _is_ \- it just doesn’t feel like it right now.

 

He doesn’t regret returning to 1973. Not at all. The team are safe, he has his job, his mismatched family of chain-smoking, beer-swigging colleagues. Even his grotty little flat is intact, though he’s started saving up for a better one. There’s just one thing missing, and he’s come to realise it’s the most important thing of all.

 

It’s not the waiting that bothers him. It’s the constant dance from if to when and back again, leaving him feeling like he’s teetering on the edge of something huge – and he’s had enough of that for one lifetime. It’s the glimpses he gets, from the corners of his eyes, disappearing just as quickly as they come, and he wonders whether he’s imagining them or not. It’s the half smiles that warm his heart and light the fire there, then the curt “Morning, sir” before she hurries away again.

 

She hasn’t forgiven him, he understands. She’s been avoiding him ever since she kissed him and asked him to stay. The mixed signals are doing his head in and once or twice (or fifty times) he’s considered just going after her; asking her to the pictures, the park, anywhere _._ Because if he can’t have a kiss like that again he wants their friendship back, he needs it. Needs someone to go to when work gets too much, needs someone to rant at when Hunt’s being even more of a bastard than usual. Someone to get rid of his migraines, give him Wagon Wheels and strawberry milk to cheer him up, someone to make him feel it’s all worthwhile.

 

He tells himself he’s being selfish. He knows he is. He’s not sure how to change that, but he knows he wants to. Wants to make the sky green and the grass purple if it’ll help her believe in him again. (Because nowadays, he absolutely believes in her.) Most of all he wants to be a friend back, wants to make her smile, encourage her when the rest of the department doubt her. Help her pick up her files when she drops them in the corridor. Catch her when she trips over the pen Ray leaves on the floor by her desk.

 

For now he will wait. He hopes one day she can forgive his betrayal. Hopes she knows his door is always open. Hopes she knows, whatever happens, that she will always be his reason to keep on _living._


End file.
